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Saturday, 15 September 2012

The female of the species

If you imagine my neurosis as a new mother then double it,
this is what it's like when I get together with a female relative of mine. We
have a regular play date with our babies but somehow it turns into
mission-must-do-everything-at-100mph.

I think the babies know this and have a cunning plan to make
a game of tag team: while one sleeps, the other wants to play, then one wants
to feed when we try to go out while the other is content. 'Right, you put the
kettle on and make the tea while I watch them' is usually the first thing
that's said as one of us piles into the house with all the baby paraphernalia.

On one occasion it was nearing the baby witching hours so we
decided to play the guitar and sing to them. Utterly unimpressed with our
attempts, they both looked away and yawned while we were manically singing and
clapping in their faces. They were the most difficult audience we'd come
across - even Simon Cowell would have given us the sympathy vote.

When we do eventually get out of the house, the prams inevitably
get knocked into each other as we aim to steer them in a straight line. The
other day we had a few errands to run in town; including getting the babies
weighed, whilst trying to time both their naps, feeds and changes as they
happily played relay.

We ended up charging around like two lunatics with these
huge buggies thundering up (and barely fitting on) the path; people were
swerving out of our way when they saw us approaching.

On arriving back at the house, grocery falling everywhere
and out of breath, we looked at them - both blissfully tucked up in their prams - they simply smiled at us and looked a bit bewildered.

All we could do was laugh at our frenzy - it would have been
so very different if the dads had them for the day. Mind you, (sorry guys) half the
things wouldn’t have got done; men and multi-tasking aren’t two things that are
generally associated together.

So kettle on, the manic mummys sat down to drink our second cup of the day
and the four of us even managed to have a kip…for all of 20 minutes, until the
relay started up again…